Counting The Cost Of Online Crime

Phishing is beginning to bite.

British police at a high-tech crime congress (noted by USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review) say that 83% of Britain’s 201 largest companies reported experiencing some form of cybercrime. The damage has cost them more than £195 million ($368 million) from downtime, lost productivity and perceived damage to their brand or stock price.

Much of the damage is being done to financial companies, three of whom lost lost more than £60 million ($130 million). Phishing has hit banks like Barclays, NatWest, Lloyds TSB and 50 other British businesses, Reuters quoted Len Hynds, head of Britain’s National Hi-Tech Crime
Unit (NHTCU) as saying.

Of course, it’s probably much worse than this. Most companies don’t report ‘cyber-crime’ to the police for fear that making the matter public would harm their reputation. The National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) said that of the companies hit by cyber-crime, less than one-quarter reported the matter to police. But that’s better than two years ago, when NO companies were reporting.

Security experts warn that a new wave of cybercrime attacks will be nastier than what companies have already experienced. David Aucsmith, chief technology officer for Microsoft Corporation’s security and business unit predicted criminals would target banking systems, company payroll and business transaction data.

Here are some other interestnig facts from Bernhard Warner’s Reuters report:

Seventy-seven percent of respondents said they were the victim of a virus attack, costing nearly 28 million pounds.

Criminal use of the Internet, primarily by employees, was reported by 17 percent of firms at a cost of 23 million pounds.

More than a quarter of firms surveyed did not undertake regular security audits.